the state
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Turkey’s Not-So-Subtle Shift on Syria By M K Bhadrakumar
The conclave at Antalya was entitled “Change in Syria”. Ankara would go ballistic if a neighboring country did to it such a thing. The conclave at Antalya didn’t happen accidentally, either. It was well planned. Turkish authorities allowed it to go ahead but with one caveat: no Kurdish political parties would be invited. The Syrian… Continue reading
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Statewatch 18 May 2011 What is a document?
European Parliament to revisit the definition of a “document” and adopt its report on the changes to Regulation on access to EU documents Continue reading
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Algeria's Rebellion by Installments By Azzedine Layachi
In mid-February, with autocratic rulers deposed in Tunisia and Egypt, and another tottering in Libya, the National Coordination for Change and Democracy took to the streets in the capital of Algeria. Continue reading
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UK: Government will spy on every call and e-mail
GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project. Hundreds of clandestine probes will be installed to monitor customers live on two of the country’s biggest internet and mobile phone providers – thought to be BT and Vodafone. BT has nearly 5m internet… Continue reading
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Sink or Swim in the capitalist ocean? By William Bowles
When a group of so-called Aboriginals from I believe Borneo (or maybe it was Papua New Guinea) visited the UK recently they were gob-smacked to find homeless people on the streets of London. The concept ‘homelessness’ simply didn’t exist in their vocabulary and reinforced by the vast wealth that surrounded them (the ‘Aboriginal and the… Continue reading
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The BBC’s hall of mirrors By William Bowles
26 August 2007 “However, especially in the years since Hutton, we’ve come to focus on it [public trust or rather, lack of it] first and foremost in the context of journalism. Accuracy, impartiality, resolute defence of our editorial independence, a willingness to acknowledge mistakes when we make them: meeting all these expectations simultaneously is an… Continue reading
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Book Review: Can’t see the wood for the trees? by William Bowles
Within the pages of this book lie the reasons that explain why men and women now inhabit different worlds, for the reasons are not biologically determined but most definitely ideological in origin but because their roots are buried in the hidden history of the rise of capitalism some five hundred years ago, the reality of… Continue reading
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Unglued, unstuck, pear-shaped, wobbly…and sick By William Bowles
The more Blair’s government rolls out one mouth after the other, to utter the words, ‘just you wait, have patience’, ‘we’ve got the evidence’, ‘you’ll see, we didn’t actually say that’, ‘read what we really said’, the more the media and critically, the public, look on in disbelief and increasingly, disgust. Continue reading
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Apologies – Remember to Remind Me By William Bowles
15 May 2003 ‘If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own…. For if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.’ — James Baldwin ‘First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 